No one dared
by sparklingice66
Summary: "Sam tells him in the driest dirthole of their freakshow of a summer, Gila Bend, AZ. "Where solar panels outnumber people." Hilarious. It's 105 and sunny, clashing with Sam's general idea of a werewolf case so hard he just wants to let that monster stay out here if it so wishes, let it burn down to embers under this desert fireball."


**A/N: **The title's from Simon and Garfunkel's song, Sound of Silence: "No one dared disturb the sound of silence."

* * *

Sam tells him in the driest dirthole of their freakshow of a summer, Gila Bend, AZ. "Where solar panels outnumber people." Freakin' hilarious. It's 105° and sunny, clashing with Sam's general idea of a werewolf case so hard he just wants to let the fucker stay out here if it so wishes, let it burn down to embers under this goddamn desert fireball. Dad is, of course, unrelenting and stone-carved, barks at Dean's puddle-loose, sweaty body until it rolls away from the wheezing ventilator and heaves up a shotgun. His boots scuff on the concrete as they carry him through the lot - they both need this hunt like a pack of heat patches on their necks. Dean winces when Baby's door creaks, the fine golden hairs on his forearm scorched by that murderous black metal, and the dark circles under his armpits seep further into his faded band shirt. He rolls away with a trail of stifling dust, and Sam stays, the little one, runt of the litter, forever brooding about the unfairness of hating to be together but not wanting to part.

He doesn't know then that he'll tell Dean in the evening.

The job ends up being a little messy, or just draining, perhaps, because Dad books another room when they come back and fucks off to God knows where, leaving the two of them alone to a whole room just for them to eat and sleep and jerk off in while he, as Sam sardonically puts it, goes out to screw some local bar fly. Dean's ecstatic, as much as one can be with blood smeared on his gel-spiked hair, and invites Sam into the shower, gives humming-chaste kisses and a sloppy handjob while the soap-suds on the tiles are still painted pink by his dirt. Even though he has death sprinkled all over his pores, it's Sam who feels sinful as he sinks to grab his imperfect, lovely knees and sucks him off until the shaking in his muscles isn't fatigue anymore.

He still doesn't know it's going to happen that day.

The afterwaves of sex don't hit them the same lethargic ways this time. Dean geeks out about the space-themed decor and its off-putting colour scheme, forever horny and groping for Sam's ass even with his mind on astronauts and the empty unknown, and Sam just blurts it out, because he can't stand that happiness anymore when his own heart is already dying, withered from the weight of his secrets. He feels vicious, wants Dean to share the pain, or to take it away by being just as cruel back, but he doesn't know it would hurt Dean more than it hurts him.

He's leaving for Stanford in a month, and Dean learns it in Gila Bend, AZ, with one hand raised to the fake stars on the ceiling and the other brushing Sam's thumb.

* * *

Dad's packed and ready to speed it out of town at six thirty and already stifling, but Sam begs because Dean can't so much as move, never mind get up, and earns them one more hour of leeway to scrape their shit together. He goes back to their bed where Dean lies awake, not a wink of sleep in him since he knows, and strokes the soft lines of the veins in Dean's right hand until Dean curls off the mattress. His back, his T-shirt-pale, slippery back stays facing Sam the entire time they get dressed and prepared for the ride.

Sam doesn't know why he decided to tell it this way.

They still have ten, seconds or minutes, you can never know with Dad - so Dean walks up to the shop next door, comes back with a popsicle, only one. Unhealthy green labelled as lime. One of the few versions of fruit Dean eats, one of the few Sam doesn't. They sit on the edge of the pavement and watch as a busty blonde titters through the rows of cars, stopping by one to wait with her phone glued to her ear. The asphalt of the road ahead stinks of tar and the too-warm sunshine ricochets back up from the barren ground there. It's too hot for a girl like that to stir up a wind, but the sight isn't half bad for the Sunset State at all. Dad stares at her bouncing locks and sees something else altogether, mutters an excuse about washing the car and pulls out the mix of degreaser from the trunk, pretends to care for the windshield instead of a fragment of his lost future.

Sam has no idea why that annoys him so.

Plop, he hears from his left, and spots half of Dean's indulgent breakfast on the ground. The first little summer bugs are gathering to it already, drawing closer as it melts, coming to bathe in its sickly sweet taste until they are stuck forever, like he and Dean are in their forbidden love and the guilt of it, their one blood. They share a glance, just once, and Dean's eyes are dead-grey in this oversaturated world.

Sam squints at the syrupy liquid that drips into the closest crack in the surface and craves, wants so much to squeeze Dean's sticky hand and be just damn with it, damn with it all.

And he stays selfish still, wants to take his mistake back and reclaim last night, wants Dean to shine happy and careless like the big brother he adores, his silver lining in the gloomy legacy of their father's mission. He wants Dean not to care, wants to be forgotten in all the wrong ways for the right reasons and it's for himself still, because clearing that pain would erase Dean's love with it and leave its memory only for Sam. To hurt over and live for.

* * *

They don't talk about it, and the clock ticks away. It's August now, orange-blue and washed-out, a warmth that's already fading even though it's burning at its highest, flames licking at the sky. The crispy darkness of dusk stays pleasant in spite of the incessant buzz of moths that flock to the light of the gas stop they've parked by. Dad's long gone to the closest motel in his new rusty truck, left the Impala truly to Dean this time, not only in name. Freedom came too late, though - Dean's lips barely twitch into a smile. What's to have your home when the soul of it is leaving?

There's something about silence that brings Sam's fears to his mind, puts them in his eyes and the stutter in the way his body moves. What if he gets lost and never makes it there? What if he fails, can't keep up, and the shame consumes him whole? What if he can't say the goodbye Dean needs to carry on? What if he can?

How will he remember the smell, the soft tickle of Dean's hair under his chin, five tiny circles of pressure skittering up and down his stomach? Will he recall the times he pleaded or the times Dean did? Can he enjoy sex again without the precise punch of Dean's thrusts? Would he rather keep the memories or forget? He doesn't know.

But he's sure he'll never love again like he does tonight.

Even in a cloud of motor oil and gas, he can pick out the scent of Dean's skin as if it was a beacon at the stormy sea, calling for him from afar. He circles the source behind the building, out in the open because he needs, longs so much to breathe air with their kisses, and Dean pulls him by the hips, come here, come here baby, until Sam's pressed to the wall and his mouth is damp and tingling from the word pressed to it, Sammy. The sign above casts pink neon half-moons in the teardrops tumbling down Dean's cheeks, and he sobs into the next kiss and the one after, lets Sam cradle him close with his hands in Dean's back pockets while he just cries and cries until empty hiccups are all he has left.

"You don't know." He says then, and his voice cracks into a whisper and dies.

No one told Sam that unconditional love tastes like salt and holy water.

* * *

On the day, his last one spent with all he hates and everything he loves, he thinks back of Gila Bend and the popsicle and grits his teeth through the cold-cutting déjà vu they bring. He announces he bought his ticket. Dad yells and stomps and threatens, but he ceased to matter a long while ago and they all know it, they just play the rounds for tradition's sake. There comes the inevitable point when the shouting stops and the old man looks at Dean, his pillar, his everything, if nomads can ever claim anything theirs, and Dean wavers, a first amongst so many lasts. His mouth opens, but he can't speak when his world is splitting apart, and Sam's horrified to see the glint in their father's eyes shatter, the utter disappointment.

What he says then doesn't cut as deep as he probably hoped, it catches Sam so off-guard, but their anger is bad enough that it's the last ultimatum, not another word more. Don't you ever come back, Sam hears it ringing in his ears as Dean drives him to the bus stop on autopilot, soldier mode on and firmly settled, the only way for him to bear this wound. It's late and the afternoon air smells more like autumn and cooling breeze than bright yellow summer.

Sam just wants to say Dean, just one more time, and hear his name in response, but he can't pop the fragile bubble between them because the emotions inside would spill out on the road and drift away. It's too much. They would crash.

They pull over in the shade of an old oak, lightning-struck and half dried out. Baby shudders into park, Dean turns, one last kiss, just another, only one more, no, come back please.

"I know, I know." Sam whispers and rubs their foreheads together, because he didn't understand back at the gas stop, but he does now. "Dean."

Dean pulls away then, keeps the tears clinging to his eyelashes rather than letting them go, and he looks like this is the worst day of his life, like he already knows nothing will surpass it, that this is the crack in their bond that breaks continents apart. He hugs Sam and presses his lips oh-so-wetly to Sam's cheek, rocks them left and right and breathes, breathes their smell in until the bus comes rumbling down the road.

Sam doesn't hear his name one last time from the love of his life and it's fine, he tells himself, at least there's something that might make them come back together when it has been too long since someone called him Sammy and Dean had someone to call that. His bags are heavy and full of useless things, stuff he would throw away without a pause if he could pack a piece of Dean's smile instead, but he grabs them all and fills his hands so that he can't drag them across Dean's body as he steps back, three feet away, now four, five, too many.

The hardest is to climb the steps to the aisle and not fall back, not to flinch away from this crazy, irrational idea that college for a hunter's boy is, but he makes it up and to his seat and thinks, it's over. He looks out the window and sighs. Dean hasn't left yet. He's standing by the battered stop sign, rubbing his left elbow over and over again, shoulders straight but composure held together only by the gossamer-thin threads of his pride.

Sam looks at his larger-than-life brother and regrets, deep in his heart, that he grew up to be so selfish and rotten, demonic enough to break something this exquisite so thoroughly that nothing but a shrinking, lonely figure remains as the bus rolls forward on its wheels.

He stares without blinking, not risking to miss a single moment, and touches the window at the spot where Dean's silhouette disappears from sight. Only then does he notice he's a mess of snot and rippling grief, and his fingers are wet, clearing paths in the dirt on the glass. He wipes at his eyes and traces that spot again, thinks of Dean reaching back for him through the window of his car, imagines this is just a magic mirror and all he has to do is wipe the decade-old stains away to see his brother on the other side. If he cries enough, they can glance through and share a smile.

Pain purifies.


End file.
